Waringstown based engineering company SlurryKat has walked away with three awards at this year’s last ever Craigavon Business Awards, including accolades for Manufacturing Excellence, Best Export Initiative and the prestigious 2014 Craigavon Legacy Award for highest achieving business within the borough.

The high-profile gala ceremony, organised by Craigavon Borough Council, showcased Craigavon’s business calibre and was held last Wednesday (9th April) in Craigavon Civic and Conference Centre, hosted by the BBC’s Jim Fitzpatrick.

SlurryKat is a market leader in the design and engineering of specialist slurry-handling equipment for the agricultural industry worldwide. The company has experienced exponential growth since 2008 as it continues to spread its dealer network across the globe. Through technical excellence and quality products, SlurryKat is now competing on a global scale, exporting over 140 product lines to 20 different countries.

The local company is no stranger to success on this platform with this being the third successive year it has come away with an award. That track record of success was acknowledged this year as SlurryKat was awarded the 2014 Craigavon Legacy Award, which went to the highest achieving business since the awards were launched in 2010.

SlurryKat’s CEO Garth Cairns accepted this award from Mayor of Craigavon Councillor Mark Baxter and had this to say about the company’s achievements:

“I am absolutely delighted to win these awards. To come away with not one but three awards on the night is just incredible and a credit to the entire SlurryKat team.” Mr Cairns said.

Mr Cairns went on to say: “These awards reaffirm our commitment to engineering world-class equipment for the agricultural industry, not only locally but internationally. We have really established the export side of the business over the past year and to be recognised in this way just makes everything worthwhile.”

Northern Ireland based SlurryKat has picked up yet another prestigious award to add to its growing array of plaudits for innovation and design.

The Waringstown-based company now has an increasingly glowing reputation for excellent and is widely recognised as a serious world-class company, supplying to at least 17 countries with its unique agricultural slurry handling equipment.

The thriving, award-winning Northern Ireland based firm, which provides contractors and farmers with a range of equipment to spread slurry, has already won a number of awards over the last two years.

This most recent award, Company Of The Year 2011, was awarded by the Association Of Charted Accountants Ireland.

Managing Director and Principal Engineer Garth Cairns (Pictured Above) said: "Winning this award, to add to the others we have already won, is further confirmation that SlurryKat is the major force in providing innovative slurry equipment that we have developed and distributed to an ever- growing market.

"Who would have thought that a Northern Ireland agricultural manufacturer would be leading the world with their unique slurry handling equipment? The plans we have for SlurryKat to deliver more equipment and parts to an ever wider geographical area will deliver exponential growth for us in the next two years and beyond."

Garth initially set up the business with just two employees after purchasing the SlurryKat brand name and distribution rights. His aim was to refocus the attention of farmers and professional contractors on the benefits of efficient slurry use, using umbilical slurry spreading techniques.

"This has now grown to include the building of a bespoke range of Super Tankers, which cannot be made fast enough due to the high demand. Again, SlurryKat Super Tankers are totally unique and tailored to each individual specification," said Garth.

SlurryKat currently has 23 people employed and is still expanding, so as the company continues with its expansion program and with a healthy order book, this is likely to increase.

The Northern Ireland Company has now offices in Ireland and Bristol in the UK. They are also looking at distribution outlets as far as Australia and New Zealand.

For more information on SlurryKat or their equipment – please contact their head office on:028 3882 0862 or email sales@slurrykat.com

Throughout the year, the Directors at the Lincolnshire Telegraph, select company’s that have best demonstrated a proven ability to go that extra mile in not only meeting but exceeding the needs of their clients.

Therefore, in line with this philosophy it gives us pleasure to announce -SLURRYKAT LTD has been selected to receive the BA PRODUCT OF INNOVATION AWARD OF THE YEAR 2009. As a completely independent Award Programme, acknowledging business excellence across a wide range of disciplines, the Business Achievement Award is recognised both locally and nationally.

This Award serves as a distinguishing factor, ranking SLURRY KAT LTD amongst the best in its field, as well as acting as a seal of approval to prospective clients.

Commenting on receiving this accolade, Garth Cairns, owner of the company said: “We are honoured to receive such recognition for our products. In the past two years we have made significant advances using modern engineering techniques to push our products to new levels previously unseen before.”

“We were driven mainly by the new EU regulations imposed in Ireland for slurry spreading and the aim was not solely to meet the regulations but also we used this as a cornerstone to enable farmers to get more nutrition value from their slurry and in turn they can experience significant financial savings with using SlurryKat equipment.

This has been readily demonstrated and proven in the past 18 months with all our customers, some of which have reduced their fertiliser’s bills by up to 80% and still achieved the same outputs from their farms by using the SlurryKat system.

Having reached these new advances, we are already working on new prototype designs to move on to new higher levels and new equipment from these designs will be seen towards the end of the year so stand by.” As a rapidly growing company using the latest high tech engineering techniques to produce high quality products, SlurryKat is the market leader in the manufacture of umbilical slurry pumping systems for agriculture and industry. SlurryKat Contracts Division offers a full range of contracting services to farmers in the north of Ireland and specialises mainly in umbilical slurry spreading using SlurryKat’s latest spreading technologies.

The Contracting Division has grown rapidly to become one of the largest slurry contractors in Ireland today and it is this vital link, providing the knowledge for design and rigorous testing of all the products, which enables SlurryKat to produce equipment of the highest quality available on the market today.

One of Northern Ireland's most forward thinking agri engineering companies has had its commitment to investment recognised courtesy by the 'Spirit of Enterprise' Award Scheme. Waringstown-based SlurryKat has been added to the acclaimed initiative's role of honour for April on the back of its highly successful product development programme and export sales drive.

The Spirit of Enterprise Awards are organised by the Ulster Society of Chartered Accountants, in association with Northern Bank. The initiative was established to officially Northern Ireland's most innovative and entrepreneurial companies.

SlurryKat was founded by Garth Cairns in January 2008, who had previously built up one of Northern Ireland's most successful Agricultural contacting businesses.

"We set up the new manufacturing operation employing just two people initially," Garth explained.

"Prior to this I had purchased the SlurryKat brand name and distribution rights with the aim of re-focusing farmers' and contractors' attention on the benefits of efficient slurry use using umbilical slurry spreading techniques.

"To date we have succeeded in forwarding this objective. Over the past two years we have developed 50 + new design options and are selling into the Irish, UK and European markets. Our workforce has increased to its current level of 17 people."

The establishment of the SlurryKat manufacturing operation at Waringstown coincided with the introduction of the EU Nitrates Directive in the UK and Ireland. Garth Cairns recognised this development as an opportunity to highlight the significant fertiliser value within slurry.

"Traditionally, farmers viewed slurry as a waste that was 'conveniently' spread on the nearest field, just to get rid of it. The reality is that slurry is an extremely useful crop input, provided it can be spread at the right time and using the best SlurryKat techniques."

SlurryKat's success over the past two years can be attributed to the company's track record in developing umbilical spreading systems, incorporating dribble bars, flow metering and GPS technologies, which allow farmers and contractors to do this very thing.

"The umbilical approach allows slurry to be spread at times of the year when land is too wet to carry a traditional tanker," Garth Cairns stressed.

"Dribble bars allow the accurate placement of slurry on to a crop. What's more, the slurry is spread in such a way that volatisation losses are kept to an absolute minimum. This reduces the smell associated with traditional slurry spreading systems to an absolute minimum. It also means that the vast proportion of the Nitrogen in the slurry is retained to boost crop growth."

He concluded:

"We have developed slurry spreading systems that work because our years of contracting experience, this has taught us about all of the pitfalls that are out there on the job. In addition, we know that any of the new products that we bring to the market actually work because our contracting division has tested and trialed them rigorously and extensively during the development process."